Kierkegaard on the Christian Injunction to Love One’s Neighbour

Abstract

In his book Works of Love Kierkegaard is concerned primarily with Christian or spiritual love, what I have earlier referred to as ‘supernatural love’ — after Simone Weil and C.S. Lewis. He writes as a Christian and has a lot to say about what commitment to its perspective means for the individual: how the genuinely committed individual is seen from the point of view of the world and how he fares in the hands of what Plato called ‘the great beast’. The distinction he makes between Christian love and human or pagan love and the way he contrasts them presupposes the perspective of Christianity. He also discusses their relation and asks whether they are at all compatible — a question on which, as we have seen, C.S. Lewis had something important to say. Indeed Kierkegaard’s book divides in two: a detailed analysis of the Christian precept You Shall Love Your Neighbour’ and a discussion of what he calls ‘the works of love’. In these two contexts he has a great deal to say about Christian or spiritual love, as directed to other human beings and as directed to God. In the present chapter and the following one I shall discuss what he says about love under these two headings.